Hare's Fur Page 5

  So where did she store food? The only container he could see was a small plastic esky. Listen, you’re not here to sort out her living arrangements.

  He walked to the slit and crouched and studied the prints. The biggest set, he saw now, were heeled boots, not joggers, but weren’t much bigger than the others. The kids were small, perhaps she was, too. ‘Remember, though, she might have a knife.’ He pushed himself up, knees cracking, and stepped into the opening of the slit and again cupped his hands around his mouth.

  ‘Please, I’m no one you need to be scared of. I come up the creek to get rock for making pots. I’m a potter. I’m the one who breaks the stone further up, if you’ve seen it. Why you’re here is none of my business. But I thought you could probably do with a bit more food. So I brought some. Okay?’

  He was answered by silence, but thought it was a listening silence. He didn’t want to say who he wasn’t, it meant speaking the words ‘welfare’ and ‘police’. Even if they could hear clearly, they were not words calculated to allay fear, might even exacerbate it. To someone a bit paranoid, to say what he wasn’t might make him that thing. He could empty the pack onto the rug and go. But his curiosity wouldn’t allow him to, he knew that. And a deeper worry. He’d seen now how rough they were living. They were candidates for pneumonia or breaking a leg.

  ‘Look, I’m truly not here for any reason other than the kids and, if you don’t mind, to get the rock I need. I’ve … been a parent myself and this can’t be an easy place to be with young children. I thought you might need milk and bread.’ He debated whether it was better to remain straight or become cagey. Straight hadn’t worked so far. ‘I’ve brought some Mars bars, too. I found a wrapper on the path. I’m guessing the kids are fond of them.’

  ‘We don’t know you! Go away!’

  The voice was not a woman’s, yet not a child’s. The ferocity, though, was maternal. He swivelled his head but the stone walls made it impossible to judge either direction or distance. Higher than where he stood was all he could say with certainty. And within hearing, which was what mattered.

  ‘Well, if you’ll let me, I’d like to make myself known. I’m Russell. What are your names?’

  ‘We heard your name! Doesn’t tell us who you are!’

  ‘I’m what I said, I’m a potter. I make bowls and teapots. I’ve been coming to this creek for a long time to get rock for making glazes. I came yesterday and saw the children. Down at the pool. Floating the saucepan.’

  He knew as soon as the words were out he’d made a mistake. She didn’t reply. Instead there carried down to him muffled voices in what sounded like an argument, then the boy’s, shrill and clear, ‘No, you are! Bitch!’ Whatever was going on, he had no role in it.

  ‘You! Russell! Where do you live?’

  The question threw him for a second. ‘Where do I live? Um … up near the old lookout.’

  ‘What old lookout?’

  ‘Well if you don’t know it, it’s a bit difficult to explain. I come on a track from the end of my road, down a glen. It comes out near where this creek joins another one. Then I walk up here. But up the other side.’

  ‘But not from town, yeah?’

  ‘Well, I’m on the edge of town. But I don’t come on the track you probably used.’

  ‘Why do you want our names?’

  Again he was thrown by the veer in direction. ‘Just … well, I don’t have to. So we could talk using names, that was all.’

  ‘What if we gave made-up ones. You wouldn’t know.’

  ‘That’s true. I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Talk about what?’

  ‘Do you mind if I ask first how old you are?’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, there’s just three sleeping bags here, and I don’t think you’re an adult, and I don’t think I saw you yesterday, did I?’

  He heard how garbled the reply was and issued himself a rebuke, short and simple! Again there was a silence. Then she said, ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Me? I’m seventy-two.’

  ‘Your kids are grown up, ay.’

  ‘My son died. When he was eight.’

  It was like the bursting of a bubble in his chest, to be shouting the fact up a cliff to a stranger. There were people he’d known for years who assumed that he and Adele had been childless.

  ‘I’m fifteen.’ There was a pause. ‘My name’s Jade.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Jade.’

  He thought he might provoke, if she had any sense of the absurd, a titter of laughter. But all that sifted down the cliff was again silence. Then she called, ‘Russell?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You promise you’re on your own?’

  ‘I give you my word.’

  ‘No! Promise!’

  He did a doubletake, before understanding that the old oath so familiar it had rolled off his tongue without thought was not in her lexicon.

  ‘I promise. No one else in the world except for you three knows I’m here.’

  ‘You better not be bullshittin. If there’s cops down there, or that DoCS cunt, you’re in big trouble. We know where you live now and we know people who can hurt you if we tell em what you done.’

  ‘If the police were with me, I don’t think we’d be still having this conversation, they’d be up there.’

  She gave a bark of laughter. ‘Not them fat fuckin town cops.’

  ‘Jade, I can’t do any more shouting. The three of you make up your mind and let me know.’

  He returned to where he’d left the pack and sat on a rock facing the slit and took his water bottle from the side pocket.

  He listened for the rise and fall of their voices. Instead what reached him was the sudden slithering clatter of stones. A moment later the boy appeared in the slit. He was in the same trackpants and windcheater, but was bareheaded, the beanie clutched in his left hand, should he again have to run. His eyes flicked past Russell to take in the shelter, then he craned his neck in an attempt to look down the scree. He called over his left shoulder, ‘Jade? It’s just him!’

  ‘Are you at the edge?’

  The boy winced.

  ‘Do what I fuckin said!’

  The boy gave him a look, stay there. He stepped down onto the floor and, keeping him in sight, crabbed to the rim of the shelter. He threw a glance over the edge and skipped back to the slit.

  ‘Jade? Can’t see no one!’

  Having done what he’d been sent to do, he could now stare. Russell was trying to puzzle out why she’d sent him. Was he expendable, under the least threat if taken into custody? He’d read that tribal people, at first contact, sent out their feeblest old woman to greet the strangers.

  ‘Hello. What’s your name?’

  The boy’s chin trembled from the effort of pressing his lips shut.

  ‘You got in trouble, did you, for dropping the Mars wrapper?’

  The boy gave a quick surly nod.

  ‘Well, you can tell Jade it didn’t matter, I was coming up past the pool anyway.’

  He attempted a smile. The boy didn’t return it. Russell noticed then how peeling and cracked the lips were. His own lips cracked in the cold, and he carried pawpaw ointment in the pack’s front pouch, but vaguely remembered having taken it over to the workshop when he couldn’t find the tube he kept there.

  ‘I might have something you can put on your lips if they’re sore. I’m not sure.’ He waited. ‘Do you want me to look?’

  The boy gave no sign either way. Confused, but needing to move at least his arms, Russell began to reach to the pouch, but stopped when the boy shuffled backwards. He was trying to think of something reassuring to say when there came another clatter of stones, and the girl appeared behind the boy. She fixed her blue eyes on Russell’s. There was no warmth in them. She, too, wa
s in the same clothes as yesterday. Her hair was snagged in the collar of her windcheater and she flicked her head to free it, the gesture almost imperious. He remembered the self-possession she’d radiated at the pool. Keeping her eyes on Russell, she put a hand to the boy’s upper arm and pushed him out of her way and stepped down onto the floor of the shelter.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Emma.’

  He nodded. ‘Hello, Emma.’

  ‘She’s comin.’

  Had come, in fact, a teenage girl in a long brown dress almost mediaeval in its cut, with tight-fitting arms and flared cuffs. There was a costume shop in town, he’d seen such dresses in its window. He stood. The girl returned his nod, then swept the shelter and the scree with her own assessing gaze. Satisfied, she stepped down onto the dirt floor. ‘Hi — Jade.’

  He walked to her and offered his hand. ‘Russell you know. My surname’s Bass.’ Her grip was swift and light, then she stepped in front of the boy and girl as if to say she’d made physical contact for them all. He retained the feel of her fingers, cool and damp, but the skin as roughened as his own.

  ‘You don’t look seventy-two.’

  He shrugged. ‘And I’d have put you at more than fifteen.’ Her thanks, if that’s what it was, was a twitch of the lips.

  She was tall, looked almost level into his eyes. Hers were green. A silver ring disfigured her left nostril. Three smaller rings, also silver, frilled the gristle of her right ear. His eyes hadn’t deceived him when he’d first looked at her, the blonde hair had streaks of pink. She was pretty, but in the pinched way of the boy and girl. Like their faces, hers too was all bones and planes, no flesh, not even around the mouth. To fine down faces to this, he knew, took longer than a few days of privation, it began at birth.

  He turned and nodded towards the pack, then beyond it to the fire circle. ‘Could we sit and perhaps make a cuppa? I’ve brought tea and milk.’

  ‘We don’t light a fire in the daytime. We got cordial.’

  He mentally slapped himself. Of course, cordial!

  ‘Cordial, then.’

  She strode past him to the fire circle, her knees against the dress a loud whispering. The boy and girl scurried after her. He thought the dress might be velvet. It was a second skin to the waist, then fell in pleats to the tops of heavy black boots worn to white across the toes. Whatever it was, the fabric looked heavy enough to be warm, but he couldn’t have said so with certainty. If they’d been born in the town they’d probably adapted to its autumns and winters. He had. But not, he knew, to the level of living in an open rock shelter. He lifted the pack and deposited it beside the slab that served as the kitchen bench.

  She had set out plastic mugs on the stone. Not looking up from pouring the concentrate, she said, ‘Tell him your names.’

  ‘I done it,’ the girl said. She jabbed the boy with her elbow.

  ‘My name’s Todd. T-o-d-d.’

  ‘He can spell it, dumbo.’

  ‘Em,’ Jade said, ‘get the rug.’

  She dippered water from the bucket with the smaller saucepan and filled the mugs and handed him one. The girl returned with the rug and threw it to float in a perfect square to the dirt floor. She tapped him on the arm, pointed to a corner. Her right eyelid, he saw now, was swollen in the early stages of what he recognised as a sty.

  The boy sat close to Jade, his hip against hers. She lifted her chin towards the pack. ‘You said bread, yeah. We got nothin to put on it.’

  ‘There’s cheese and there’s tin fish.’ He dragged the pack to him, undid the flap and drawstring, then proffered the pack by the straps. She put down the mug and spread her knees and propped the pack between them. She drew out first the parcel of white paper, raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Chops. They should still be frozen.’

  She placed the parcel on the rug and tugged out by its twist the round-ended loaf, stared suspiciously at it. He guessed they’d only ever eaten white sliced.

  ‘It’s that kind so it wouldn’t get squashed. You’ll need a knife. The tins are at the bottom.’

  She took out instead the block of cheese. It, too, needed a knife. She reached for a plate and placed it on the rug and lay the cheese unopened on it. She tapped the boy on the thigh and hooked her head. He stood and went to the mattresses. When he turned he was holding an eight-inch kitchen knife. Russell guessed he’d taken it from under whatever she used as a pillow.

  She cut off the crust end and put it aside, made single-slice cheese sandwiches for the boy and girl. He declined, telling her the food was theirs. She made an open sandwich of the crust. The other two were already loudly chewing. He took the clickseal pouch from his jacket pocket and opened it in his lap and took out a date and some cashews, then dropped the pouch open in the centre of the rug and sat back and took a sip of his cordial. It was too diluted to identify with certainty, but he thought it was lime. The boy had stopped chewing. He leaned to Jade and whispered.

  ‘He wants to know what they are.’

  Russell looked at the boy. ‘Which — the brown things? They’re called dates. Try one. Watch out, though, they’ve got a seed in the middle.’

  Despite the warning, the boy put the date whole in his mouth. Two chews and he stopped and pulled a face. When he lifted fingers to his mouth Jade slapped the hand down. ‘It’s in your gob, you eat it!’

  She caught Russell’s look.

  ‘By now she’s down Silverwater. Women’s gaol. They got done for possession and dealin, her and his father. Just so you know.’

  Not her father also, then. Or the girl’s? It was too soon to ask about family history. ‘When was this?’

  Her eyes narrowed. She looked off into the trees. They were eating his food.

  ‘We been here nine days. They got picked up in the Family — the pub?’ He nodded. ‘A guy there rung my sister soon’s it happened, and she come round the house before the dogs showed up.’

  ‘The dogs?’

  ‘The DoCS arseholes.’

  He noted the toning down of the language. Was it in deference to his age, he wondered, or his ignorance?

  ‘And she’s … where? Your sister.’

  ‘Here — Katoomba. But she lives around, yeah. Then, but, she and her boyfriend were crashin in that old YMCA.’ She saw his blank look. ‘Near the high school?’

  He couldn’t bring up even the vaguest image of where she meant. He shook his head.

  ‘They brung us down here. They knew it from when … She and him knew it, yeah — from before.’

  ‘Yes, I’m asking too many questions. It’s just you’re talking about a side to Katoomba I don’t know much about.’

  ‘Why would you?’

  ‘Oh, here — and Blackheath where I grew up — always had their —’ he was about to say dark side — ‘their underside —’ wondered if that, too, would be heard as insulting, or at least judgmental. Well, it was out now, he’d said it. ‘Just I don’t think we had DoCS back then — doing what you’re talking about — it was the police.’

  ‘Fuckin still is.’

  She spat the words, but past not at him. The boy and girl had stopped chewing and were watching his face. He reached down as calmly as he could and took a date, but his mind running in search of a different subject. It was beside him, the circle of stones, the camp oven.

  ‘I think other people were living here well before your sister.’

  She met his eyes again. ‘Yeah. They got told it too. It’s heaps old, she said.’

  He nodded at the oven. ‘And … do you use that?’

  She began to reach to the lid handle, then drew back her hand. He was surprised to see that her throat and cheeks had coloured. ‘We heat rocks in it. To put in our bags.’

  ‘That’s a smart idea. Yours, I’m guessing.’ He loathed flattery, but told himself there were situations in which it could b
e just tolerated, this being one. He hurried on, though, rather than milk the moment. ‘And for food, what — you go back up?’

  ‘I don’t leave these.’ She hooked her head towards the kids. ‘She and him come down. They have to watch, but. The cops know em.’

  The younger girl had swivelled to look at the back wall. He followed her gaze and saw them too, a row of tally marks scratched into the stone. ‘Five,’ the girl said. Emma, he reminded himself.

  ‘What’s today?’ Jade said.

  ‘Saturday.’

  ‘They come Monday. Why we’re runnin out. Depends on her dole. If they’re short they do a hit on a weekender. No shortage of them.’

  It was a world he knew nothing of.

  ‘How do you … contact her? There’s no reception down here. You do have a phone?’

  ‘Yeah. There’s a bit if you climb. I’m savin charge, but.’

  There was no point offering to charge it. She wouldn’t leave the kids to collect it, and he wasn’t coming down again with just a phone. He had his wallet, but it held at the most ten dollars, which was useless. The two young ones had been following the conversation, their eyes flicking to Jade when she spoke, but returning instantly to him for his answer. He realised what he was becoming, a hope, even perhaps a saviour. He needed a diversion. He nodded at the girl.

  ‘Is that hurting — your eye?’

  She touched the swelling gingerly with a fingertip and nodded.

  ‘Rubbing it with gold’s supposed to work.’ He slipped off his wedding ring. It came easily now. ‘Here.’

  The girl looked instead to Jade. She shrugged. The girl took the ring and held it tentatively to the reddening on her lid.

  ‘Rub he said!’

  The girl bowed her head and began to move the ring.

  ‘I don’t know how long for. Maybe count to a hundred, eh.’ The girl wanted the attention taken off her. He turned to Jade and lifted a finger towards the pack. ‘The milk’s long-life, but probably needs to go somewhere cool. I’d suggest with the chops.’

  She emptied the pack, the dry goods onto the slab, the milk, cheese and chops into where he’d guessed, the small esky. Emma gave him back his ring, murmured thank you. When Jade made to open the front pocket he said no, the bulge was just an empty bag. That when he left them he was going up to the top of the creek to collect the rock he’d hiked down for yesterday. She came alert like a dog shown a stick. Could they come, she asked shyly, the second sign he’d been given that beneath the maternal fierceness was a teenage girl. ‘We seen where you get it.’ He had begun to wonder what they did all day. He doubted the zippered bags held any books. He’d deliberately not mentioned school, teachers perhaps in the same category as DoCS officers.